


Between Two Lungs

by TheCarrot



Series: Elementals [2]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BAMF Cassandra, Cassandra controls the Wind, Elemental Lits, Elemental Magic, Elementals, Gen, Wind - Freeform, Wind sprite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 02:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16379966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCarrot/pseuds/TheCarrot
Summary: The Wind had come to her two weeks before her diagnosis.Two weeks before her entire world falls apart.





	Between Two Lungs

**Author's Note:**

> So much thanks to 0hheytherebigbadwolf for the awesome beta! And to ziazippy5379 for the awesome review. Hope you guys enjoy part two!

_No more gasping for a breath_  
The air has filled me head-to-toe  
And I can see the ground far below  
I have this breath  
And I hold it tight  
And I keep it in my chest  
With all my might  
I pray to God this breath will last  
As it pushes past my lips  
As I gasp 

**\- Florence + the Machine “Between Two Lungs”**

 

———

 

Cassandra is the wind, sitting perfectly still in her hospital bed as a storm rages on outside. Wind whipping through the tall buildings and sparse trees, pounding against the glass of her room. She can hear the voices in the gales calling to her, urging her on, to run, to flee...but also to be strong, to endure. And she does. Then, after she leaves the tests and the scans, she finds that for once, she feels free. Cassandra can laugh along with the wind as a breeze plays with the ruffles and lace of her new purple dress. She calculates the strength of the shears as they rush by, watches tornados and hurricanes and sees the equations go around and around. She feels free in the oncoming of a storm; finally taking that deep breath of fresh air she never knew she needed.

\--

 

The Wind had come to her two weeks before her diagnosis. 

Two weeks before her entire world falls apart.

When her wall of trophies goes tumbling down into the garbage bin, when the headaches and light show, finally become ‘tumour’. 

She’s finally found a friend, only to realize that it may just be the grape sized growth inside her head that’s given her such an imaginary thing to cling onto along with the visions. The Wind convinces her to take a Tuesday all to herself and she does and suddenly she doesn’t care if the Wind is just a by-product of her crazy. 

Cassandra had run out of the house and down the street, her math homework and the taxes left half done behind her on the table, along with the orange peel her father hadn’t bothered to clear away. 

The Wind beats her to the top of a hill and together they forget all about the blood test and the results that make her mother cry and her father shout. They forget all about the visions starting behind Cassandra’s eyelids and together they waste away the day in the largest windstorm New York City has ever seen, knocking out power for the rest of the day. For a little while she plays pretend that she doesn’t know what the doctor meant when he said, ‘we’ll need to run more tests.’ 

It’s only when Cassandra gets back home that reality crashes in around her and not even the Wind can penetrate the cement walls of her hospital room. It’s left on the outside, to rage and to draw her attention to all that’s still left for her beyond all of this if she survives. 

Then, in true Cassandra fashion, she does. 

She survives.

The Wind likes to play with her hallucinations as they go down the street, but instead of making her dizzy, watching the numbers disappear into the wind calms her in a way she never knew was possible. Her death still looms in front of her but Cassandra doesn’t fear it the way she used too. With the Wind by her side, she fears nothing.

Oddly, in light of Jacob’s confession, Cassandra realizes she has completely and absolutely forgotten to tell the others of her own ability to control the Wind. It has been such an integral part of her everyday life that she doesn’t even think to mention the Wind when faced with the fact that Magic is real. When she does remember she falters, either distracted by a new artefact or waylaid by a case; then, it’s just a matter of cold feet.

Finally she gets the opportunity to let the others know shortly after walking with Estrella one night at the respite. The Wind has been dull in her ears since the surgery and even quieter since learning about Jacob and the water. Cassandra can feel deep down in her bones how afraid the Wind is as the once steady flow of numbers and formulas usually floating around in her head have become their own kind of hurricane when she says ‘On.’

The Wind is scared and now so is she.

Its taken her almost a month to work on her gift enough to even be able to control turning it on and off and from those days the quiet has made her nerves raw. 

Suddenly all her fear and the power and the Wind come to a head one day, in the middle of a case, with Ezekiel and Eve by her side. Jake is not there to talk her out of her spiral, and while Ezekiel has had some luck, there’s a way the historian pushes and pulls with his words and his touch that soothes her like the ocean waves. It makes sense, she thinks, seeing as he is water incarnate in a way. 

The three of them are in the middle of the Nevada desert chasing after a wind sprite and Cassandra had thought to herself as she walked through the backdoor, that she, if anyone, was going to be able to handle this mission the best. Wind sprite...person who talked to the Wind... it was in the bag. Even if the Wind had been quiet for weeks now, she could do this.

It only takes three hours of walking around the desert for them to come across the wind sprite and get lost chasing after it. Eve’s capris are torn in two spots and her white tank top will never be clean again, but her sun glasses glint dangerously in the sweltering sun clearly stating that the damn pixie (“it’s a Sprite Colonel Baird, not a pixie.” Jenkins had sighed for the tenth time during his explanation,) is in for a world of hurt when she sees it again.

Ezekiel is by far the most comfortable of them, his aviators perched on his nose and a wide red bandanna wrapped around his neck. Cassandra has no idea how he’s still in long pants and a t-shirt but he marches ahead of them, climbing on the outcropping of rocks they’re searching with ease and telling them that there is still no Pixie (“Sprite, Mr. Jones. Sprite. Like the pop, yes.”) in sight.

Cassandra herself is a million degrees past her melting point. Even calling a small breeze to her now is difficult, harder than it has any right to be due to the noise in her head, but what she does conjure is hot, sticky and full of grit. The whisper of voices that she can hear on the Wind out here are not the ones she likes hearing. They’re full of screams and age old secrets buried beneath the sand. The desert winds are sweeping across vast empty wastelands only to lick at her heels like a bad aftertaste that lingers in her mouth.

A loud cry sounds before her and Cassandra’s eyes shoot up just in time to see Ezekiel get blown off his rocky perch. He manages to catch himself at the last moment and lands in a crouch on a lower edge of the outcropping.

“Jones!” Eve rushes forward but she isn’t fast enough to keep the thief from getting hit with another blast of wind. They watch, helpless from their position too far away as Ezekiel gets slammed into the hard cliff face then tumbles down into the sand unmoving. 

Cassandra freezes when she sees the blood start to run down from the back of his head and into his eyes, and suddenly everything is quiet around her. Like the first inhale after drowning Cassandra is rooted to the sand and gasping for a breath she can’t get enough of.

“EZEKIEL!” 

The Wind comes in like a freight train. Fast, loud, and unstoppable.

For the first time since she was a young girl, the Wind is like a barrage around her, whipping through the sand and sky like a blade and Cassandra can’t even focus on the fearful look on Eve’s face as the Guardian stares at her in shock. 

“Cassandra!” Eve’s shout is lost to the roaring noise around the redhead and she digs her hands and heels into the soft sand, using her body to cover Ezekiel’s still form. 

Cassandra however can’t focus on anything other than the Sprite, looking gleeful where it’s floating in the air above them, and she sends the Wind after it with a vengeance. The Wind is crystal clear in her vision and in her head and Cassandra doesn’t even take a moment to celebrate. All she can see is the thief slamming into that rock over and over again… laying unmoving.

Sharp zephyrs and brute force gales slam into the creature and before Cassandra even knows what’s happening, the Sprite is falling out of the air as she lifts up into it. There’s voices in her head again but this time they aren’t the kind she summoned from the dessert. These voices are the free and clean ones she once heard off the Wind of a fjord in Iceland. Cassandra smirks, her glowing visions are now completely clouded over with the direction force ratios she needs to keep the Sprite down and Cassandra doesn’t let up. 

For the first time since she was a child on the streets of New York, the Wind is screaming at her to get her attention.

So she gives it.

The fight is over before it even truly begins. 

Cassandra touches back down in the sand and feels the Wind curl around her, rubbing against her skin through her khaki tank top and playing with her hair, making it stand on end. Happy, it’s so happy to be back.

The sprite lays unmoving beside the rock outcropping and Cassandra watches dispassionately as it blinks up at her before it disappears in a swirl of blue, taking its chance to escape. The redhead would feel bad about the horrible wounds she caused, except… she doesn’t. Because the desert is still now, the sun beating down on them as a small clear breeze quietly starts around them.

Ezekiel groans from his spot under Eve’s arms, and he blinks owlishly up at the older womans bewildered face. It takes him a moment to remember the sprite and Cassandra calling his name, only when he tries to shoot into a sitting position his vision swims and Eve’s hand shoots out to keeps him steady. Blinking back the wave of nausea Ezekiel looks around and when he finally spots Cassandra standing apart from them, sighs in relief that she’s unarmed.

“Damn girl…” Eve chuckles, looking at Cassandra with wide eyes, and Cassandra watches her Guardians expression turn from alarmed to amused and then into a highly approving smile as she pulls Ezekiel to his feet. 

It’s a smile that’s easy to return and Cassandra falls to her knees in the middle of the desert and feels the tears well up in her eyes. The wind is strong in her ears and the math settles around her vision the way it used too. 

She feels like she can breathe. 

So she cries.

Cries until strong arms wrap around her and a shaky hand falls to rest on her shoulder. It’s enough to have the mathemagician lift her head to see Eve’s blonde hair cloud her vision. She can tell it’s Ezekiel’s hand on her shoulder though and Cassandra lets the wind curl around the three of them, blasting away the heat and the danger and finally, finally, Cassandra feels normal again.

—

Explaining it to the others is not as hard as Cassandra once thought it would be. 

“It’s the wind. It’s always been the wind and the math.”

There’s raised eyebrows from Jenkins and a low whistle from Flynn, but Ezekiel just groans as the pain finishes settling into his skull. 

Jake smiles at her and steps up next to her, feeling the invisible breeze press against the moisture he’s gathered around him.

“Honestly?” Jacob laughs, wrapping an arm around Cassandra’s shoulders and pulling her into a warm embrace. “I’m glad it’s not just me.”

Cassandra laughs, returning the hug with all her might before pulling away. She’s not sure why her and Jacob’s eyes fall to Ezekiel just then; almost as if they’re waiting for something, but the thief just groans and keeps his hands on the ice pack that he’s holding to the back of his head.

“You sure you’re okay?” Eve asks as she comes back into the Annex out of the kitchen, brandishing a new bag of frozen peas at the youngest librarian. 

“Oh, aces.” Ezekiel mutters curling more into himself. “Wind and water... brilliant...bloody hell…”

Eve chuckles under her breath, resting the frozen bag in her hand on the back of Ezekiel’s head and taking the old one away. “He’ll be fine. His head as hard as The Shield of Agaroth.”

A small breeze follows Cassandra’s laugh that echoes through the Annex and the red head can only smile around at her friends, Jacobs hand held tightly in hers as she realizes, once more, that she’s not alone in this. 

Not anymore.

None of them will ever be a candle in the wind ever again. 

For she controls the wind and won’t allow anything to diminish the light of anyone as long as she can stop it.

**Author's Note:**

> Waywaychuck over on tumblr and Instagram


End file.
